OK. I had both my Elites disconnected from the network and I rebooted one of my TiVo Minis. When it came back up I was still able to access and play the recordings from my OTA only Premiere.

So that at least works but I have no idea how long it will last. It might last indefinitely or there might be a time limit that TiVo has imposed that kicks in when there is no communication with the host Elite/XL4. I just know that in the short term it works.

I never got around to checking since I had a bunch of recordings going on from both my Elites. I'll try just disconnecting the Ethernet connection from both my Elite and rebooting one of my Minis to see what happens. I had tried it before without booting the Mini and that had worked fine for ten minutes accessing my OTA Premiere, but I never rebooted the Mini.

When I made the call in, after the Elite disconnect, is when my OTA Premiere, could not be accessed by the Mini.

I have my Mini connected via MoCa and it works great. When I disconnect the Elite from the network, here are the messages, that I get. My Two-tuner Premiere is on ethernet, not MoCa. So no connection for the Mini, of course.

When I made the call in, after the Elite disconnect, is when my OTA Premiere, could not be accessed by the Mini.

Aaron, can you try "calling in" please.

Ok let me try it.

EDIT: Both my Elites were disconnected from the network and I had the mini make a connection to TiVo. After it was done I was still able to connect to my OTA only Premiere and watch the recordings. Let me try having that Premiere make a connection to TiVo and see what happens.

I had both my TiVo Minis make a connection to TiVo and I also had my OTA only Premiere make a connection. After the connections were finished my TiVo Minis were still able to watch the recordings from my OTA only Premiere even though both of my Elites were not connected to the network.

I had both my TiVo Minis make a connection to TiVo and I also had my OTA only Premiere make a connection. After the connections were finished my TiVo Minis were still able to watch the recordings from my OTA only Premiere even though both of my Elites were not connected to the network.

Ok, I will try this again when I get home. I'm at Bestbuy, trying not to spend money.

UPDATE;

I tried this again. I CAN ACCESS the two-tuner Premiere, after disconnecting my Elite. Even after "Calling in" I still can. The only thing that I did different was, I used MoCa the first time. I'm trying it again now and will report back.

Also, I do get the nag EACH TIME I access the Premiere. It says that it can't find my Elite.

UPDATE 2;

I ran my test again, exactly as I did the first time. I CAN ACCESS my Premiere, after disconnecting my Elite. I do still get the nag, EACH TIME I access "My Shows". I must have messed up somewhere, the first time that I experimented.

ok, 30+ hours since my first support call and ~48 hours after receiving my minis, they're still not working. i called support again before they closed and it sounds like my case has been escalated again but i think what jmpage2 said is correct and there is something seriously screwed up with my account that is preventing things from working. i've ordered all of my devices directly from tivo so there shouldn't have even been an opportunity for me to screw things up if i tried

The Mini I ordered from bestbuy.com came in today. Even though I followed the setup instructions, setup was still a wonky experience.

First thing I did was activate it on tivo.com. Easy enough.

I didn't get around to setting it up until about an hour later (instructions say 15 mins). I set the Elite to share 1 tuner, and forced a connection so it could grab a ready activation.

Went downstairs into the kitchen and connected everything (using MoCA with FiOS) and began the guided setup. It connected to the MoCA network fine. When it came time to select the Host DVR, the Elite was red circled off. Error V70. harumph.

Went back upstairs to the Elite, forced another connection and also rebooted it for good measure.

Came back downstairs and realized if I wanted to proceed in Guided Setup and get the host DVR change to "kick in" I would have to start over. So I unplugged the Mini and restarted Guided Setup.

That worked. I selected the Elite and completed G.S.

Then there was a new problem. The Mini lists the shows but I couldn't stream anything or connect to Live TV. It claimed my ethernet wasn't plugged in. Error V94... Which is weird for 2 reasons. I was using MoCA, and there is no V94 on Tivo's website. So, that's useless. Tried rebooting the Elite again, didn't work.

Some folks here mentioned a software update. So I forced a connection on the Mini. Ah ha! A software update. It connected to the servers during GS; why didn't it download this update from the beginning? Downloaded and restarted.

Now everything works. That update may be vital and should have been automatically downloaded from the start.

Forcing reboots and connections shouldn't be necessary, but now that everything is running, I am pretty happy with it. UI is snappy. The channel changing is slightly faster than I thought it would be -- a pinch faster than shown in the video demo from a couple weeks ago. So that is a bonus. Not that I'll be channel surfing much.

The Mini I ordered from bestbuy.com came in today. Even though I followed the setup instructions, setup was still a wonky experience.

First thing I did was activate it on tivo.com. Easy enough.

I didn't get around to setting it up until about an hour later (instructions say 15 mins). I set the Elite to share 1 tuner, and forced a connection so it could grab a ready activation.

Went downstairs into the kitchen and connected everything (using MoCA with FiOS) and began the guided setup. It connected to the MoCA network fine. When it came time to select the Host DVR, the Elite was red circled off. Error V70. harumph.

Went back upstairs to the Elite, forced another connection and also rebooted it for good measure.

Came back downstairs and realized if I wanted to proceed in Guided Setup and get the host DVR change to "kick in" I would have to start over. So I unplugged the Mini and restarted Guided Setup.

That worked. I selected the Elite and completed G.S.

Then there was a new problem. The Mini lists the shows but I couldn't stream anything or connect to Live TV. It claimed my ethernet wasn't plugged in. Error V94... Which is weird for 2 reasons. I was using MoCA, and there is no V94 on Tivo's website. So, that's useless. Tried rebooting the Elite again, didn't work.

Some folks here mentioned a software update. So I forced a connection on the Mini. Ah ha! A software update. It connected to the servers during GS; why didn't it download this update from the beginning? Downloaded and restarted.

Now everything works. That update may be vital and should have been automatically downloaded from the start.

Forcing reboots and connections shouldn't be necessary, but now that everything is running, I am pretty happy with it. UI is snappy. The channel changing is slightly faster than I thought it would be -- a pinch faster than shown in the video demo from a couple weeks ago. So that is a bonus. Not that I'll be channel surfing much.

So far so good.

When I went thru the gs, after it seemed it was done- after about 15 minutes of downloading, it said it had to download an update and repeated the whole process. Not sure why it didn't download the newest update initially.

The lag on channel changing is disappointing to me, but I don't channel surf much on the mini set up so its not much of an issue.

t+72 hours and still not working I got an email today asking me to call support again, which I just did but no new revelations - I mostly just got asked to re-confirm everything I already did. The tech did take another look through my account and said he didn't see any problems.

I asked if he could deactivate and re-activate the minis and he said he couldn't do it since they were lifetime. He said he'd escalate it again, as a parting shot he suggested I could try re-running GS on one of the XL4s, although he had no real reason to believe that would help... but it's better than nothing.

I'm ready to give up. No idea what is wrong and the only update I've had in the past 2 days was "Have you told the TiVo that you are using a tuner for the mini yet?" Not only have I been asked that about 10 times already, but based on people's experience here it's not even required (I've done it anyways, on both XL4s).

I called tonight and asked to speak to a supervisor, which I did, no real progress there either. I asked him to deactivate one of the minis and let me reactivate it, but he wasn't willing to do that. I might go to BB and pick up another one, but it's a PITA to get out there plus the PITA of returning one of the minis.

Tell TiVo that they have until Friday to get the product you paid for working or you will not only be returning it, you will not be paying return shipping. You will be posting unflattering reviews, etc.

Insist on your problem being escalated to engineering. They are the ones who can fix it.

If you send the units back, perhaps buy another at best buy afterwards and try it out. You also need to try running an Ethernet cable directly from the mini to your router. Make sure you can ping it on the network.

I cannot complete GS. The initial call goes fine, I set the name, then it wants me to pick a Tivo to pair with. Both of my XL4s are there but greyed out, and selecting either one produces error V70. The only other option is "I don't see my TiVo" which produces another screen with a "try again" option that takes you back to the previous screen.

As far as the network setup, even though I knew it probably didn't matter (I spent ~11 years of my life writing software for switches and routers), one Mini and one XL4 are now connected directly to my router. They are definitely on the same subnet and can see each other (there is no way to see the IP of the mini in its current state but as I mentioned above I found a diag screen on the XL4 that shows some information about the mini). None of the devices have any problem contacting TiVo and I stream stuff between the XL4s all the time.

The fact they asked me *again* "did you dedicate a tuner" is the most discouraging part - it doesn't give me much hope anyone is making meaningful progress. And the CSRs (even the supervisor) won't even try anything outside their script. I suggested deactivating one of the minis and letting me reactivate it a few times, they won't do it.

A brief glimmer of hope today as they suggested disabling the IGMP Proxy on my router, which other FiOS customers have had some issues with. I was skeptical (believe it or not, I spent a few of my aforementioned networking years working on IGMP and PIM-SM) but gave it a shot... but no. I could see that causing a problem with the boxes discovering each other via Bonjour/Beacon but that doesn't seem to be the issue I'm having. And I've never had issues with Tivo->Tivo or Tivo Desktop, kmttg, etc.

Although, that did get me digging around in the router config, and i noticed there is "host-specific IGMP filtering" with all addresses except my one verizon STB marked with an "X". So, I set "allow" for both the tivo and mini's addresses, but to no avail. I'd have to guess the filtering is only for LAN->WAN but who knows, it's not really documented.

But, it did inspire me to mess around some more - I basically started screwing around with everything else I could think of. I changed the IP subnet on the router and made everything get new IP addresses, no. I turned off the firewall for a bit, no. I hooked the tivo and mini to another switch and connected that switch to the router (just to convince myself it wasn't filtering packets), no. I switched the Tivo from ethernet to moca and back again (yes, I have both), no (didn't try moca on the mini though). Tried renaming the tivo and the mini again. Reboots and forced calls all around, multiple times. Still hosed.

I'm debating whether I can get everything on the internet without using FiOS at all. I think I can use my laptop as a router/DHCP server and tether it to my phone for the "WAN" side. Not sure if it's worth the effort...

PS: yes, I'm convinced that trotting out my networking experience has more or less guaranteed this whole thing is ironically going to turn out to be my fault, and probably a really dumb n00b mistake at that. But I'm trying everything I can think of to make sure that's not the case

At this point you absolutely want to eliminate your FIOS service and router. Assuming TiVo does not send anything encrypted a good next move for you would be to hook up a Mini to a hub (not switch) and get a Wireshark trace. I am pretty good at looking at Wireshark TCP dumps (sounds like you can do that too) so perhaps there is a clue to be had by looking at what is going on when the Mini tries to connect to the Elite.

todd_j_derr since you're messing around a lot anyway, maybe you should enable MoCA on your 4 tuner unit and then try and use MoCA on the Mini to see what happens. If that works and you get the Mini paired to the 4 tuner unit then you can go back and try ethernet again.

oops, my last response was about the packet sniffing... but, yeah, I might try putting both on MoCA. Like I said, I already switched the XL4 to moca and had the same result (my Verizon router is bridging my ethernet and moca networks - I have moca adapters in other rooms of my house). I could try disabling the LAN moca stuff entirely too. Verizon uses a separate moca channel for the WAN side and then there's a device that bridges that to the fiber connection, you can change that connection to ethernet and/or eliminate verizon's router entirely if you want... but all that is getting into more of a timesuck for grasping at straws.

There's some IGMPv3 traffic from the mini right after it boots (224.0.0.22), it joins and leaves 224.0.0.251 a few times.

A lot of mDNS traffic from all 3 boxes on 224.0.0.251 udp port 5353. I gather this is Bonjour. The intervals between queries seem to be longish (up to several minutes) and there's no obvious pattern.

Actually selecting anything from the menu on the mini does not appear to provoke any network traffic, even if I pick "I don't see my DVR" and "Try Again". If I use left arrow to go back and change the name I see a flurry of activity but it looks like it's just doing some queries for the new name followed by a bunch of responses announcing the new and old names.

Maybe I'll go see if I have an old hub or managed switch lying around so I can sniff the unicast as well.

FWIW, changing the name of the XL4 produces the same effect where it announces itself via beacon + bonjour with a flurry of traffic. If I pick something on the mini's menu and go back it sees the new name for the XL4 immediately.

No, or at least I can't find one. I've historically been a terrible packrat but I did a huge purge of old computer crap a couple years ago. The 2400 baud modems were probably a safe bet but maybe I should have held on to a hub... but I bet I can scare one up from a coworker.

You don't really need a hub these days. Google ARP poisoning. You can spoof things so that all packets go through your computer after which when running Wireshark it sees all traffic when sniffing. Doesn't help much when TLS is being used though.

If the Mini shows the proper name for the XL4 then this is NOT a local discovery issue. This is an account issue. The Mini sees the XL4 it just doesn't think it's a viable host.

I'm sure you've done this but just to be sure go to your account on tivo.com and verify that the Mini and the XL4 are both listed on your account AND that they are listed with the proper TSNs. If either is wrong then you might be able to fix it by clicking the "Change Service Number" link.

If they are both listed correctly then click the View media access key link. Now open a new browser window and enter...

https://<mini ip>/nowplaying/index.html

when prompted enter "tivo" as the user name and your MAK as the password. If it does not take then that means your Mini does not have the proper MAK assigned. If it does take then try the same exact thing but use the XL4s IP instead. Does that take?

If they both take then it means they have the same MAK and should be able to talk to one another. The only other thing it could possibly be is the on the TiVo account go to DVR Preferences and make sure the XL4 has the video sharing and video downloads options checked.

If you've done all that then something is hosed on the back end and your only hope is to find someone at TiVo that knows what the heck they're doing.

Edit: One more thing... You don't happen to have a bunch of TiVos on your account do you? TiVo has a hard limit of 10 devices per account and things can get really wonky when you exceed that limit. Even if you have old TiVos with lifetime that are still on your account.

Thanks Dan. I'm able to log into one of the minis (the other isn't hooked up right now) and the XL4s with the same key. I hadn't tried that before. FWIW, I'm 99% convinced it's TiVo's problem too but since I'm not getting any help from them I'm willing to try whatever I can do myself (although my patience is wearing thin, it's been a full week now).

My hope from last Friday was that they screwed up the TSN of the minis when they activated them but that looks correct. I've also verified the numbers on the cardboard box, on the mini, and actually being sent on the network all match. Sharing and downloads boxes are also checked (also verified multiple times) and the XL4s have always been able to stream from each other. Although, I might try un-checking and re-checking them... Too late for me to mess around with it anymore now but I'll try it tomorrow.

I have 6 devices on my account - one S1 (not sure why it's still there), 3 XL4s, and the 2 minis. One of the XL4s was a gift for my mom and I haven't got her set up with an account and transfered it yet - but it's not at my house. Shouldn't matter, but.... Anyways, well under 10.

Maybe I'll go buy a mini at BB tomorrow and see what happens. I dunno, I'm losing my desire to spend any more time on this than I already have.

Todd, you are not alone. I have read your posts and am in the same boat as you. I ordered my Tivo Mini from Tivo's website as well and get the V70 error on the Tivo Mini.

I have tried many of the same things as you such as rebooting everything, changing the Tivo name, forcing a connection to Tivo's services, trying an all ethernet connection vs. Moca. I am confident that this is not a networking problem as I can ping each Tivo. I have even gone as far as doing a packet trace seeing that there is two-way communication between the Mini and Tivo's network.

I, too, have chatted with Tivo and called Tech support multiple times without any success. Just called this morning and was first instructed to force a connection to Tivo services, which like you is all of a sudden taking a long time to do. I reluctantly went along telling the agent I just did this and to check the notes of my previous interactions. After staying on the line for 20 minutes, the agent instructed me to call back when the download was complete. So frustrated at this point.

How many Tivos do you have on your account? I just noticed that the other two people having similar problems have a lot of Tivos on their account. I know it was mentioned that the limit was 10, but I'm wondering if Tivo has a bug with adding the Mini when there are a large number of Tivos either on the account or connected to your network.

I have just a TiVo Premiere XL4 and a Tivo Mini on the account. I had done much of the same troubleshooting that Todd has done before even coming to this forum. I was relieved it was not just me after reading all of his posts.

I did see that Tivo does not like to have more than 10 Tivo's active on one account though. Thanks.